1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic semiconductor wafer applying apparatus for applying and holding a semiconductor wafer to a ring frame through an adhesive tape in a process prior to the process of scribing the semiconductor wafer.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional automatic semiconductor wafer applying apparatus is known to have a construction as described below. Ring frames, one by one, are taken out of a group of ring frames which are stacked and contained in a frame supply section, by a frame supply transport mechanism. The taken ring frame is transported and set to a predetermined tape applying position. An adhesive tape unwound from a tape roll is supplied to a lower surface of the ring frame and then applied thereto by a tape applying mechanism. The applied adhesive tape is cut out in a circular shape along the ring frame by a tape cutting mechanism. Then, the residual tape peeled from the lower surface of the ring frame is wound up and recovered. Also, the ring frame having the adhesive tape applied thereto is transported to a predetermined wafer applying position. A semiconductor wafer is transported and applied onto the adhesive tape of the ring frame which is positioned and set to the wafer applying position. Finally, the ring frame having the wafer applied thereto is stored in a frame storage section.
However, the prior art having such a construction has the following problem.
Recently, the ring frame having a large diameter has been used complying with the increase of the diameter of the semiconductor wafer. For a continuous operation, a large number of ring frames (for example, 200 to 300 ring frames) have been also loaded in the frame supply section. As a result, the total weight of the whole ring frame group is considerably heavy (under the assumption that one frame is 300 g, the total weight amounts to 60 kg through 90 kg). Thus, a great effort is required for the operation of stacking and loading the ring frames by inserting the hand into a lower portion of the apparatus.